Gas

For a long time it has looked as if the large-scale gas finds in the eastern Mediterranean would be stranded. The Leviathan field, located 80 miles off Haifa in Israel, which holds some 16tn cubic feet of gas was discovered five years ago but remains undeveloped and is not even completely defined. Israel has enough gas for its own needs from the smaller Tamar field, and politics and economics have combined to deter any of the wider development options. Now though a new option is emerging which makes development much more likely. The gas can be sent to Egypt. The move is rich in irony but it makes commercial and political sense. It could also mark an important moment of change in relationships across the region. Read more

The conventional wisdom is simple – business and politics are two separate worlds, which should not mix. Corporate leaders should not be involved in anything that smacks of political activity. Business exists to make money not policy.

That is the mantra – and it is wrong. In two weeks time the St Petersburg International Economic Forum is due to meet. Business leaders should be there and should have the nerve to tell Vladimir Putin what he doesn’t want to hear.

The St Petersburg forum is President Putin’s answer to Davos – a prestige event designed to show that Russia is a key part of the global economy. As the FT reported last Friday, the US government does not want business leaders to attend. Valerie Jarrett, Mr Obama’s adviser, has been calling CEOs telling them not to go, as part of the process of demonstrating that after what has happened in Ukraine, Russia is isolated and friendless. Many are taking her “advice”. In Europe the position is more ambivalent. European sanctions on Russia are soft and the rhetoric from Berlin and Brussels even softer. Many European leaders seem to regard Ukraine as Russia’s sphere of influence. There is little appetite for bringing the country into either the EU or Nato. In contrast to Russia, Ukraine cannot afford to employ the lobbying skills of Gerhard Schröder and his ilk. Read more

Week by week Scotland seems to slip away. The reaction to the fiasco at the CBI demonstrates just how sensitive business is to involvement in politics. But the future of the United Kingdom is a matter on which business should have a strong and clear voice. In its absence the momentum behind the cause of independence will grow. Read more

One of the greatest mistakes in the analysis of what is happening in Ukraine is the view of Russia as a one man dictatorship. That is clearly not the case. Moscow is a complex political society with numerous powerful figures. They, rather than Russia’s passive democracy, determine who is in charge. Vladimir Putin has been a strong leader but his power is not absolute. The eternal truth is that all leaders lose power in the end and very few go voluntarily.

After nearly 15 years in office as President or Prime Minister he has already exceeded the normal lifespan of leadership. Actuarially he is living on borrowed time and is dependent on continued success. In the current situation the line between success and failure is very narrow and energy issues are at the heart of the judgment. Read more

The first and easiest prediction arising from the continuing crisis in Ukraine and the deterioration of relations between Russia and the EU is that natural gas prices will rise. After all half the gas Europe imports from Russia comes through Ukraine. Very little of that supply can be replaced from other sources in the short term.

Russia has announced a sharp (44 per cent) increase in prices for the gas supplied to Ukraine – in part as a punishment for past unpaid bills. Surely Europe must be vulnerable to either a cut-off of supplies or a forced price rise? And yet in the real world actual gas prices have fallen over the past month and now stand at a three-year low. Is the market mad? Read more

Life in the Middle East never stands still. The inexorable progress of Iran towards some form of nuclear capability has not been halted by the negotiations which began at the end of last year and which have now run on for almost six months. In the absence of a deal others are assuming the worst. Unilateral direct action by Israel still cannot be definitively ruled out. Meanwhile, other countries are feeling the need to prepare their own deterrents. Having lost confidence in the umbrella of US security the Saudis are developing their own capabilities. The dangers for the region and for the world’s energy markets are enormous. Read more

The dispute over Ukraine has moved into a diplomatic phase and for the moment at least the prospect of a Russian advance into eastern Ukraine has receded. The consequences of what happened in the Crimea, however, continue to shape European policy making. The invasion provided a sharp reminder of Europe’s reliance on Russian gas – a degree of dependence which the EU will now reduce even if a settlement is agreed by the diplomats. It is quite possible that within two or three years European gas imports from Russia could be halved. Russia would be reduced to being one supplier among many in a world where gas-to-gas competition inexorably reduces prices. Read more

Readers will be familiar with the issue of shale gas - its potential to change the world energy market and the controversies surrounding its development. But you might be less familiar with tight oil – oil from shale rock which can also be extracted by hydraulic fracturing. That is the next story and its development particularly in the UK will be every bit as controversial. Even the publication of the initial basic survey of the resources in place is being held up by political nervousness. Read more

The full-scale competition review of the UK’s energy market which will be announced later this week is a challenge the industry should welcome. The inquiry will absorb a huge amount of time and effort over the next year but it offers the chance both for the industry to clear its name by removing the cloud of public suspicion over pricing policies and simultaneously for individual companies to examine their own strategic positioning in a market which is changing rapidly.

Of course, the competition review will add to uncertainty and will reinforce the reluctance to invest in new generating capacity, which is already evident, but the sense of doubt will exist in any case, and the review may help to produce some longer-term clarity. In the short term the government will have to find a new mechanism to ensure that supply is adequate to meet demand – and doing so with an expensive plan for emergency electricity supplies. But that is a separate issue from this fundamental analysis Read more

George Osborne in his Budget speech on Wednesday talked, correctly, about US industrial energy costs being half those of the UK. The situation has deteriorated rapidly over the past five years. His proposed response is worth quoting directly:

“We need to cut our energy costs. We’re going to do this by investing in new sources of energy: new nuclear power, renewables, and a shale gas revolution.”

This must be a speechwriter’s joke. A line written in where the content bears absolutely no relationship to reality. New nuclear at £92.50 a megawatt hour will double the current wholesale price of electricity. New offshore wind on the Department of Energy & Climate Change’s own figures, which many feel are too low, will cost more than £120/Mwhr. These are not secret figures. They are well known in the Treasury, as is the risk of generating capacity failing to meet demand. There was no mention of that little problem. Read more

This week’s meeting of the European Council in Brussels will be a significant test of the EU’s relevance and unity in dealing with the consequences of what is happening in Ukraine. Over the years as indigenous production, especially of gas, has declined Europe has allowed itself to become more and more dependent on Russian supplies. Last year Europe imported 160bn cubic metres of gas – a quarter of its total requirements. Even if Russia were a normal country that level of dependency would look high. Now, with Russia ignoring the strong messages from the German and American governments urging restraint in Ukraine, and massing troops on the border, reducing that degree of dependence is a matter of urgency. Read more

Older UK readers will remember the Green Goddesses – fire engines held in reserve for moments of national emergency. At the height of a crisis army drivers would maintain an essential service. Well, lo and behold, some new Green Goddesses are to be created as the government launches its “emergency electricity reserve”. Read more

What happens now for the numerous companies, led by the oil majors, who have chosen to invest in Russia? The surprising answer may be that the short-term risks are less serious than the longer term prospects of disengagement as energy consumers, especially in Europe, reduce their dependence on a supplier they do not trust. Read more

Putin at the launch of the Russian section of a Russia-China oil pipeline in 2010. (Alexey Druzhinin/AFP/Getty)

As well as demonstrating the courage of Ukraine’s people, the one thing that the country’s political crisis of the past few weeks has made clear is the weakness of Russia. President Vladimir Putin likes to present his country as a reviving world power but it is trapped by its own dependence on oil and gas.

The threats and sabre-rattling will no doubt continue. Russia may be able, and should perhaps be allowed, to keep control of the Crimea and its black sea naval base at Sevastapol – though history does suggests that current events are simply sowing the seeds of another long-running conflict there, not least with the Tatars.

Beyond that, however, Moscow is in no position to confront Europe or even the new government in Kiev. The Ukrainians must not allow themselves to be provoked by an Emperor who has no clothes. Read more

Forget the evidence, feel the populism. That seems to be the motto of the UK secretary of state for energy, who has written to regulators suggesting that British Gas and perhaps other gas suppliers should be broken up because their profits are too high. There is nothing like picking on an enemy no one loves. With their refusal to be completely transparent on costs and pricing, the utilities have made themselves sitting ducks.

Never mind that there has been no competition inquiry (rejected by the Government despite support from EDF, who rightly argued that one was needed to clear the air). Never mind that the figures quoted by Mr Davey have been in the public domain for months, without triggering action by Ofgem. Never mind that Ofgem is a highly professional public body that knows what it is doing. And most of all, never mind the consequences. Read more

Globalisation is incomplete. Markets are open, but in most sectors corporate ownership is still dominated by companies from one side of the Atlantic or the other. This is becoming anachronistic and is set to change.

Nowhere is this more true than in the oil and gas business, where the international market is dominated by what used to be called the Seven Sisters. The formation has changed. Mobil, Amoco and Gulf have gone but the group remains recognisably similar to what existed 80 years ago and still led by BP, Shell, Exxon, Total and Chevron. The only state company that has been truly successful and which can seriously be added to the list is Statoil. The rest of the state companies remain very much creatures of the nation state in which they were established. Read more

Later this week the management of Royal Dutch Shell will finally explain why it has issued a profits warning only 12 weeks after its last formal statement to the market. Investors are waiting for a full and detailed presentation on Thursday. Anything less will reinforce the impression that there is a governance problem which has left top management and directors out of touch with the operations of the business.

Profit warnings are serious things, which means this is quite different from the normal public relations tactic of shovelling all the problems on to the back of an outgoing chief executive, and giving his successor a low baseline from which performance can only improve. Surely a company as serious as Shell is not playing that game? Read more

I am glad I don’t live in eastern Europe and I can quite understand why against a good deal of economic logic Algirdas Butkevičius, the Lithuanian prime minister, is pushing very hard to force his country into the eurozone. The reason is the reassertion of Russian power across the region. The advance is not military but economic with energy issues to the fore. Comecon is being recreated. Read more

Is energy policy made in Brussels ? The obvious answer would be no. The EU may have an energy commissioner but he has little real authority. Energy policy is still under the control of individual national governments and as a result there are 28 very different approaches and outcomes. France is supplied by nuclear power. Germany by contrast is phasing out nuclear in favour of renewables. Much of Eastern Europe still depends on coal. There is cross border trade, of course, but most countries have their own distinct energy market.

A series of announcements over the last few weeks, however, suggests that the European Commission which is in its last year in office wants to assert its authority over energy issues by indirect means, using environmental and competition policy to create a de facto Common Energy Policy. A Commission policy statement on energy will be published before the end of January. The issue promises to become more visible and part of the continuing debate about the balance of power between Brussels and the member states. Read more

Vladimir Putin has finished the year in style, consolidating Russian control in Ukraine and winning easy brownie points for the release of controversial prisoners including the oil oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky and two female members of the punk band Pussy Riot. The Russian president has also, in a move easily missed in the middle of Christmas, extended Russia’s position in one of the world’s most interesting new oil and gas regions – the Levant basin in the eastern Mediterranean. Read more

Nick Butler

on energy and power

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This blog looks at the relationship between energy and power, plus the global trends and influences on the industry. Nick aims to blog twice a week

Nick Butler is Visiting Professor and Chair of the Kings Policy Institute at Kings College London.

He spent 29 years with BP, including five years as Group Vice President for Policy and Strategy Development at BP from 2002 to 2006. He has also served as Senior Policy Adviser at No 10, Chairman of the Centre for European Reform and Treasurer of the Fabian Society.

Nick Butler is an investor in, and an adviser to a number of companies and institutions in the energy business. The views expressed are solely those of Mr Butler. This material is not intended to provide and should not be relied upon for investment advice or recommendations. Readers are urged to seek professional advice before making any investment.